


Lost Diamonds

by Angelfishi



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Bromance, F/M, Friendship, Keith is a Dumb, Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, Romance, Shadows of Almia, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelfishi/pseuds/Angelfishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Keith loses a maybe-priceless diamond and is forced to search for it with his least favorite coworker. Brotalk and feeling rants ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Diamonds

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a really old "bonus chapter" I had to a fic from long ago. It's still pretty good, so hey, why not post it here? 
> 
> My headcanon Kate is a shy, timid, meek girl who can quietly pack a punch when needed. Keith is Keith. Sven is a lady-killer, obviously.
> 
> And yes I name Partner Pokemon after music terms because I'm cheesy like that aaagh.

Pretty.

Sparkly.

So beautiful it made my eyes hurt.

No, for once this wasn’t Kate’s eyes.

“Diamonds,” I said. “I am staring at over a hundred million dollars’ worth of _diamond._ ”

Allow me to rewind. About an hour or two ago, Kate and I had led a raid into an abandoned building where a bunch of thieves had been supposedly hiding out and stashing their loot. Among the various treasures we’d located were:

A couple gold necklaces.

Some ruby earrings.

Several emerald figurines.

An 8-foot tall silver statue of a Psyduck (yeah, I don’t know either).

And a _million-bajillion diamonds worth like a hundred million bucks._

“Keith, don’t stare so much, or your drool will stain the table,” Kate said calmly, somehow ignoring the _riches in front of us_ as she sorted through a bunch of boring paperwork. That was pretty much how our partnership worked: she did boring paperwork, and I took care of the badass stuff. Or I stared at shiny things. Either way.

“Kate,” I said slowly, “are you even _noticing_ this?”

The diamonds were tiny, probably no bigger than my thumb—but there were over a hundred of them, all in a neat little plastic box on the table. And what’s more, Vato the scientist had recently told us that these were _special_ diamonds, mined all the way off of Mount Coronet from Sinnoh. They had been found deep in the darkest recesses, an ancient mine filled with perfectly cut diamonds. Studies had shown that they had been cut by ancient dwellers of Mount Coronet and their Pokémon. What’s more, they were worth over 10,000 dollars _each_.

Somehow that made them all the more nice to look at.

“So… shiny,” I mumbled, staring into the hypnotizing facets of the pretty little devils. Once again, Kate’s sweet and yet somehow irritating voice cut through my thoughts.

“Keith. Stop looking at those gems and help me with this paperwork,” she said. “Besides, they might not even be real.”  
“Yeah, yeah-WHAT?!” I screeched, standing up. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘NOT REAL’?!”

“I mean what I said,” the brunette said simply. “Those diamonds are mixed up with a bunch of fake ones the robbers had made. The Union’s going to be running tests to determine which are real and which are fakes.”

She looked at me, her pale blue eyes blinking. “Didn’t you listen when Chairperson Erma was saying this after we got back?”

Meanwhile, my soul was slowly being deflated.

“B… b-buh…” I whined. “…They’re so… _shiny._ ”

“As they say, Keith, beauty is only skin deep,” a sudden, ominously familiar voice came from the doorway.

I yelped and spun around to see who it was, only to grimace. Lovely. It was Sven, _or,_ as Rhythmi preferred to call him these days, ‘His Fabulousness’.

“Oh, great,” I muttered. “It’s the pretty boy.”

Kate was irritatingly happier than I was to see the guy. “Sven!” she bubbled. “What brings you here?”

Sven smiled. “Just seeing how the paperwork’s coming along, Katie,” he said. “There’s not much for me to do here; there are no Missions that need taking, and most of the Union scientists are off testing the other batch of ‘diamonds’.”

My ears immediately perked up.

Ooooh. _More_ shinies.

Pretty shinies.

Keith _likes_ shinies.

“What do you mean, ‘other batch of shini—‘ err, ‘diamonds’?” I inquired.

“I mean what I said,” Sven shrugged. “The other batch that is either real or not. That’s what they’re testing for.”

Kate nodded. “I see…” she murmured.

Sven nodded. Then he sighed.

“It’s all a big bother if you ask me,” he said. “They’re comparing and taking notes and reading clarity and using huge microscopes—when really, all they have to do is something way simpler.”

I blinked. “Such as?”

Sven looked up. “Hit it,” said he. “Hard. It’s simple really—if the diamond is real, it’ll stay perfectly intact. If it’s fake, it’ll shatter into little tiny teeny-weeny pieces.”

Kate laughed. “But of course we can’t do that,” she said. “Even if the diamond was real and didn’t break, we’d run a severe risk of denting it and- _Keith what are you doing?_ ”

Kate had spotted me taking a fire extinguisher off the wall. I was grinning like a madman.

“All we have to do is whack it, right?” I said happily. “Then we’ll know for sure.”

“Well, yeah, but KEITH!” Kate exclaimed, getting that look she gets when she’s flustered. “There are certain variables to be considered!”  
“Such as?” I challenged.

“Such as how the Chairperson will be after your hide if she finds out you were taking a fire extinguisher to what could possibly be a 10,000 dollar diamond that doesn’t even belong to the Union,” Sven said bluntly.

I sweatdropped, but rolled my eyes as I took one diamond out of the box and set it on the table. “She doesn’t have to _know._ We’ll just tell her we used some super-scientific method or whatever.”

“Like what?” Kate squeaked, now totally scared. Oh, she was so cute when I was scaring the hell out of her.

“The Internet,” I said simply. “Now then; TALLYHO!!”

I brought my fire extinguisher down onto the maybe-diamond.

Good news? It didn’t break.

Bad news? It flew out from under the extinguisher, broke a window, and then was out of our sight.

…

_“Shit,”_ I cussed, running to the window. I examined it quickly and, finding severe cracks but no noticeable hole, deduced that the shiny had only bounced off of the window and skidded somewhere in the room.

“Congratulations, Keith Damian Evans,” Sven deadpanned. “You just lost 10,000 dollars.”

“Oh Arceus oh Arceus oh Arceus oh Arceus” was all I was picking up from Kate, who now looked about ready to pass out.

“OK,” I said. “No… sudden… movements. It’s still in the room. All I have to do is find it, right? RIGHT?”

Sven looked up at the clock, which read 1:30 PM. “You have about two hours to do it,” he said. “That’s when the scientists finish testing, where they will then come here and pick up the diamonds to count them and make sure none were stolen.”

Did hitting a diamond with a fire extinguisher and losing it count as stealing? I didn’t really wanna find out.

“I-I can help!” Kate piped squeakily. “I-it’s got to be somewhere—I mean, sure, it’s clear and tiny, b-but it’s reflective so it can’t be that hard to—“

“No,” I said quickly, “don’t worry about it. You have a meeting with Professor Hastings about some of your Styler data, right? You go, and I’ll stay and find the diamond.”

Truth be told, I didn’t give a flying Bidoof’s ass over whether she went to that meeting or not. I just didn’t want Kate mixed up in another one of my crazy situations. She’d always share detentions with me whenever I dragged her into my mess back in school, and I can’t tell you how many Kincaid lectures she’d received by my hand. So yeah, I wanted to protect her. Your point? No, don’t answer that.

Kate still looked uneasy. “I-I…”

“How about this,” Sven butted in with unnecessary cheerfulness, “you go to the meeting, and _I’ll_ stay and help out Monsieur Redhead here. Does that sound good, Katie?”  
Eye.

Twitching.

I saw a vague tint of pink appear on Kate’s cheeks, and she smiled cheerfully. I felt myself scowl, but I had to hand it to Sven. He sure knew how to make a girl pleased.

“Is that OK, Evans?” I heard the guy ask. I muttered a ‘yes’ unhappily.

Kate beamed more.

“Well, I’ll go to the meeting, then,” she said. “Good luck, both of you!” And then she left the room, leaving me alone with this cowboy… animal tamer… _thing._

I felt Tempo, my Buizel partner who had been with me the whole time, nudge my arm.

_“Dude, don’t get so riled up,”_ he said. _“Sven isn’t_ that _bad. He’s just a bit… glimmerous.”_

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Glimmerous’? Oh, that one was going into the books. Nonetheless, I sighed.

“Well, let’s get looking!” Sven said ‘glimmerously’, and the two of us proceeded to get on our hands and knees to search.

This was going to be a long two hours.

**.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.**

Nothing.

Nada.

_Zip._

After one whole torturous hour of searching, we had come up with nothing but bad moods and a lot of dust.

My Partner Pokémon Tempo, being the wonderful Buizel that he is, had already ditched us in search of food.

Best. Friend. _Ever._

Sarcasm, of course.

“Goddammit!” I seethed as I inspected the underside of a chair. “How hard can it be to find one _shiny_ diamond?”

“Well, considering how it’s the size of our pinky and clear, quite hard,” Sven answered simply as he checked the corner of a bookcase. “I certainly didn’t think it would take this long, though.”

“Same,” I groaned. “Arceus, I’m an idiot.”

“Can’t argue there.”  
“Shut it.”

Sven laughed as he looked into a crack in the wall. He seemed to have something on his mind; his eyebrows were furrowed, his dark eyes were clouded with puzzlement, and he drummed his fingers like he did whenever he was thinking deeply. Sensing an opening, I gladly took it.

“What’s with the face, Captain Constipation?” I asked. Sven scowled at me.

“This is my _thinking_ face. And I was _thinking_ about a certain two people.” He said firmly.

“Ooooh!” I grinned happily, sensing a tease-fest. “Would it happen to be a certain cowboy and a certain Staraptor rider?”  
“No, it would happen to be a certain pigtailed brunette and a certain irritating redhead.”

…

Well, damn.

I looked down, attempting to continue my search.

“There’s nothing to think about,” I said firmly. “Kate is my friend. It’s never going to be anything more than that.”

“Is it?” Mr. Cowboy asked with an irritating air of innocence. Arceus, this guy was getting on my nerves. “I mean, if you really do like her, you should tell her. That’s my opinion, at least.”

“Thank you. I will take your opinion into careful consideration before chucking it out the nearest window to _rot._ ” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sven rolled his eyes as he peeked under an armchair. “You know what I don’t get, though?”

“The fact that that cowboy hat you wear is tacky, stupid and will never be in style?”

“Cowboy is _always_ in style. And no,” he retorted a bit sharply. “It’s why someone like you is attracted to someone like Katie.” I felt my eyes blink at this question

“…Excuse me?” I said slowly, trying to be cautious of the ground I was now stepping on.

Sven rolled his eyes. “C’mon, you know what I mean,” he prodded. “Katie is sweet, delicate, shy, kind of a crybaby, and she jumps at the drop of a hat. And you’re… well, you’re… you’re Keith. An outgoing, explosive, destructive, hot-tempered, wears-your-emotions-on-your-sleeve boy with a dangerously short fuse. You guys are opposites… so how did you manage to fall for her?”

Blinking, I groped for an answer, but was surprised to find that my brain had stopped working.

…Why _did_ I love Kate?

We didn’t have anything in common besides being Rangers and having spiky as hell hair. I was an artist. She kept to her books. I rushed headlong into action. She preferred to stay back, and calmly figured out a strategy. I was a people person. She thrived on her reclusive, shy nature…

So why was I so crazy about this chick?

“…It’s because…” I muttered, searching for the right words.

Sven waited patiently for my reply. Arceus, I hated him for that. If anyone took this long to answer a question _I_ had asked them, I would have gotten bored by now and gone to get some food, yelled at the person to hurry up and reply, or at least fidget and twitch in annoyance. But Sven—nope. He stayed there, silent, stoic, waiting like a statue for my answer.

“…I admire her,” I finally managed. “She’s… she’s not confident, or extreme, or outgoing… but that’s what I like about her! I-I mean, she’s strategic, shy, way, _way_ kinder than most people—“

—I felt my words begin to speed up—

“—she’s weak in resolve, but when she knows it’s for the right thing, she really can do anything. She’s not selfish like I am—well, unless there’s cookies involved—a-and she’s really smart, and talented, and amazing and cute and beautiful andIjustlovehersomuchso—!!”

“Calm down before you give yourself a heart attack, kid.”

“H-hah?”

Sven’s hat was covering his eyes from sight. He felt around under a bookshelf for the accursed diamond.

“I understand your feelings. Katie is… she’s an amazing person,” he said simply.

I blinked. Then I blinked again.

And then I looked away. “…That’s what I just said,” I mumbled gruffly. Then I felt an impish grin spread over my features. “So, what about you and Wendy?”  
“Oh my Arceus.”

“What? Wendy’s bigger than Arceus?”  
“OK, OK, OK. I’m almost there. Just a little more—!”

“Huh? You’re close to confessing? Well, good on you, I mean—“

“NO! I THINK I FOUND THE DAMN DIAMOND!”  
“WHAT?!” I sprang up from my seat. “Seriously?!”

“Yeah—I just—“ Sven bit the inside of his mouth, reaching under the bookshelf further. “Right… there……!! Got it!!”

Sven pulled out his hand to reveal what was indeed the shiny, glittery, and now somewhat dusty diamond.

“FINALLY!!” I jumped up, cheering. “Now we just have to—“

“Hello?” I suddenly heard a familiar voice from down the hall. “Anyone heeeere?”

Jumping in shock, I grabbed the diamond, did a flying leap to the box of jewels, and dropped it in. Then I proceeded to put my hands behind my back and start whistling in what was well known as the _‘Keith-is-totally-innocent-he-did-not-steal/lose-any-diamonds-nope-no-way-he-is-a-good-boy’_ pose.

Linda walked in the room, writing on her clipboard. She smiled. “Hi, guys!” she chirruped.

“Hey, Linda,” we both answered, Sven’s voice being irritably more cool and calm than mine.

“How did the tests go for the diamonds?” Sven asked.

“Ah, it turns out that the batch we had was the fakes,” she said cheerfully. “ _Those_ are the real ones!”

Well, hey, at least I was right.

Linda continued with her spiel. “Anyways, the bank was so grateful for our help, that they’re letting us keep one diamond.”

“Seriously?” My eyes widened. “That’s great! 10,000 dollars will be great funding for—“

“Sorry, but that’s not happening,” Linda sighed. “Chairperson Erma refused. She said that all our funding is going to come from sensible sources, and not ‘foppish, glimmering pieces of rock’. Her words, not mine. She told me to take care of what happened to the diamond as long as it didn’t get involved with the Union… so now we’ve ended up with one unaccounted diamond.”

Wait.

Hold up.

You mean if didn’t _matter_ that I lost the jewel?

_You mean I didn’t have to spend two hours with that bitch Sven searching for that accursed shiny object?_

I bit down these words, though, and tried to be glad that the mess was over with. “That’s… great,” I said through gritted teeth.

Linda smiled. Then she turned to Sven.

“Sven,” she said, “I don’t have any use for such a huge amount of money, and I don’t know anyone else who could use it well… so do you want the diamond? You give jewels out to girls like candy, right? And I heard you collect them, too.”

Sven smiled. “Sounds good, kitten,” he said happily, taking the same diamond we had _just found_ into his hand. “I’ll take good care of it.”

Linda smiled, and then left the room.

I sighed in relief, flopping down into a chair. “Well,” I said, “thank Arceus _that’s_ over.”

“Amen,” Sven muttered in relief.

At that moment, none other than Kate walked into the room, carrying both Lyric, her Pachirisu, and Tempo on her shoulders. She looked just as worried as before.

“You guys!” she cried. “I just found out, it doesn’t matter if you find the diamond or not! Apparently one is still unaccounted for, so—!”

“We know,” I groaned, “Misha told us. We found the diamond, though, the one who’s keeping it is—“

“WELL!” Sven interrupted loudly, cutting me off. “I’m going on patrol. See you, Katie, Monsieur Redhead.”

And that was when he suddenly captured Kate in a tight hug.

I felt my blood boil in my veins, jealousy infecting my heart like poison. He had _no_ right over the embodiment of sweetness that was Kate. Neither did I, I reminded myself somewhere in the back of my head. Then I blinked. Did he just… no, that’s impossible. I must have imagined his hand drifting to Kate’s pocket…

“By the way,” Sven called as he departed, “I think Keith got you a little gift. Check your pocket.”

“Huh?” I said abruptly, brought out of my silent rage. I pondered for a split second over what the hell this cowboy was talking about, at the same time Kate checked her pockets. Tempo and Lyrical jumped off her shoulders, running off to go play somewhere.

Then it hit me.

No.

No way.

_No way did he just—_

Kate pulled a sparkling diamond out of her pocket.

I squeaked in slight fear.

Her mouth dropped open.

Our eyes both met.

A long silence passed, finally broken by a “u-uh,” from my throat. I was horrified to find that my voice had ceased its connection to my brain, and my heart was starting to short-circuit.

_Sven was_ _so freaking dead._

**Author's Note:**

> Stupid, cheesy, I wrote it last year. But I hope you enjoyed my obscure OTP-fest!


End file.
